Hello everyone,
I've decided to take MJ's advice and focus on one idea that I have that I think fills a need and solves a problem. I'm always keeping my eyes open to things that bother me or irritate me when I go to a store and sure enough, there are opportunities to be found. One such problem I had and still have is with posters.
I will invariably stop and thumb through the posters to see what they have and that is that. But I got to thinking back to when I was younger how much of a pain in the butt posters were to hang up. There were usually two routes you could take: 1) Simply buy the poster, have four thumbtacks, unroll it without bending or creasing it (for all of us OCD people out there) and tack it up and voila! Or 2) you buy the poster, but wanting to be and look a bit more sophisticated, you buy a poster frame to frame your poster in. For anyone who has ever tried to unroll a poster and put it in the frame, I feel your pain. Over the years, I became pretty good at getting a new poster in a frame, all the while keeping some of my past posters behind my new poster. Another problem is centering the poster. It's easy if the poster's dimensions match up with your frame, but occasionally, you have a small gap/border either at the top/bottom or on the sides and getting them even was a job.
The posters are close to the electronics department and I happened to notice the digital photo frames. I wondered why there wasn't a version for posters that would eliminate the need for paper, the need to frame the poster and the need to make sure it fit evenly. I came home and started searching online to see if anyone had invented a digital poster frame. There were those who had converted HDTVs into digital poster frames, but why anyone would commit the money and the TV for a poster frame dumbfounded me, besides being too heavy to mount without a wall mount. There were also companies that made digital poster frames for commercial use, either those that would be mounted or attached to a solid base. Again, these were very nice, but were geared more towards businesses that could afford them and not a consumer to hang in a room in their house.
My idea/invention is to make a digital poster frame that is lightweight (thus able to be hung on a wall without the need for a wall mount), wi-fi capable, capable of high resolutions, and have a subscriber service that would license the various characters from companies that kids and adults like, which would allow for easy wi-fi downloading to the digital poster frame.
Right now, I'm committed to learning how to work with circuitboards and electronics, as well as getting digital picture frames that don't work and taking them apart to see how they work and what will be necessary for my application. Granted, I know I've probably bitten off way more than I can chew, but that's fine by me. Given the timetable of the Fastlane, I'll get this done.
I'm still tossing around certain things I think that these should or should not have: touchscreen vs. physical buttons, built in battery vs. external power supply, built in memory in addition to expandable memory via SD card or USB drive.
I've given this a lot of thought and I have been tinkering with the idea off and on for about a year. I almost shopped my idea off to Quirky, but I am a control freak and violating that commandment was something I couldn't do. I'm sure they could do it, no problem, but I want to see if I can do it.
What really lit my fire was seeing Sal/Likwid24 and how great he has done and will be doing for the foreseeable future. I thought, if he could do it, so can I. I know this won't happen overnight; I don't expect it to. But I've planted my flag and I will dig as deep as I can go with this. If done right, this can be a winner, something that people will think where has this been?
I've decided to take MJ's advice and focus on one idea that I have that I think fills a need and solves a problem. I'm always keeping my eyes open to things that bother me or irritate me when I go to a store and sure enough, there are opportunities to be found. One such problem I had and still have is with posters.
I will invariably stop and thumb through the posters to see what they have and that is that. But I got to thinking back to when I was younger how much of a pain in the butt posters were to hang up. There were usually two routes you could take: 1) Simply buy the poster, have four thumbtacks, unroll it without bending or creasing it (for all of us OCD people out there) and tack it up and voila! Or 2) you buy the poster, but wanting to be and look a bit more sophisticated, you buy a poster frame to frame your poster in. For anyone who has ever tried to unroll a poster and put it in the frame, I feel your pain. Over the years, I became pretty good at getting a new poster in a frame, all the while keeping some of my past posters behind my new poster. Another problem is centering the poster. It's easy if the poster's dimensions match up with your frame, but occasionally, you have a small gap/border either at the top/bottom or on the sides and getting them even was a job.
The posters are close to the electronics department and I happened to notice the digital photo frames. I wondered why there wasn't a version for posters that would eliminate the need for paper, the need to frame the poster and the need to make sure it fit evenly. I came home and started searching online to see if anyone had invented a digital poster frame. There were those who had converted HDTVs into digital poster frames, but why anyone would commit the money and the TV for a poster frame dumbfounded me, besides being too heavy to mount without a wall mount. There were also companies that made digital poster frames for commercial use, either those that would be mounted or attached to a solid base. Again, these were very nice, but were geared more towards businesses that could afford them and not a consumer to hang in a room in their house.
My idea/invention is to make a digital poster frame that is lightweight (thus able to be hung on a wall without the need for a wall mount), wi-fi capable, capable of high resolutions, and have a subscriber service that would license the various characters from companies that kids and adults like, which would allow for easy wi-fi downloading to the digital poster frame.
Right now, I'm committed to learning how to work with circuitboards and electronics, as well as getting digital picture frames that don't work and taking them apart to see how they work and what will be necessary for my application. Granted, I know I've probably bitten off way more than I can chew, but that's fine by me. Given the timetable of the Fastlane, I'll get this done.
I'm still tossing around certain things I think that these should or should not have: touchscreen vs. physical buttons, built in battery vs. external power supply, built in memory in addition to expandable memory via SD card or USB drive.
I've given this a lot of thought and I have been tinkering with the idea off and on for about a year. I almost shopped my idea off to Quirky, but I am a control freak and violating that commandment was something I couldn't do. I'm sure they could do it, no problem, but I want to see if I can do it.
What really lit my fire was seeing Sal/Likwid24 and how great he has done and will be doing for the foreseeable future. I thought, if he could do it, so can I. I know this won't happen overnight; I don't expect it to. But I've planted my flag and I will dig as deep as I can go with this. If done right, this can be a winner, something that people will think where has this been?
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